'The divorce SPEAKS FOR ITSELF"

Singer-turned-actor Billie Piper on her turbulent past and becoming the woman she is today

- ARIANA LONGSON

It’s been over 25 years since Billie Piper took the music industry by storm at just 15 years old, becoming the youngest singer to enter the UK Singles Chart at No.1 with Because We Want To.

The years that followed were turbulent, to say the least, and the star knows a thing or two about navigating the highs and lows of fame and the challenges of living a ‘mind-blowing’ life in the public eye. Her Las Vegas wedding aged 18 to a then 35-year-old Chris Evans – who she today insists is ‘one of the good guys’ – and her whirlwind noughties lifestyle made headline after headline. But looking back, Billie, now 41, admits, ‘[I] loved that time. Learned so much. Really needed it, after the experiences that I’d had, leading up to that point.’

These days, actor Billie says fame is ‘the most toxic part’ of her job, not least because of the interest in her second – now former – husband and father of her two sons, Laurence Fox. But despite that, in new interviews with Grazia and British Vogue, the star of Netflix’s Scoop has opened up about co-parenting with the controversial activist, her varied career and her ‘unhinged’ past.

The actor called time on her marriage with Laurence, 45, in 2016 after nine years. But his headlinegrabbing opinions make it almost impossible for Billie to escape him.